How to get ender pearls fast in Minecraft

To get ender pearls fast, go to the Nether: trade gold to piglins and hunt endermen in a warped forest, ideally at the same time. Plan on roughly 190 gold ingots for twelve pearls from bartering ^[1], or about 24 enderman kills without Looting and 6 with Looting III ^[2]. Here’s where those numbers come from and how to collect safely; all figures are for Java Edition 1.21.x unless noted.

How many ender pearls you need

Eyes of ender, which find and open the End portal, are each one ender pearl plus one blaze powder ^[3], and one blaze rod crafts two blaze powder ^[4].

An End portal has 12 frames and needs an eye in each. When a stronghold (the underground structure that holds the portal) generates, each frame has a 10% chance to already contain an eye. That leaves a 28% chance of no free eyes at all, and a 34% chance of two or more ^[3].

You also spend eyes finding the stronghold. A thrown eye flies toward it, then has a 20% chance to shatter instead of dropping back down, and eyes only fly like this in the Overworld ^[3].

Twelve pearls cover the worst-case portal; two or three more cover eyes that shatter. Speedrunners, who also throw pearls to travel, aim for at least 16 ^[5]. For survival, 12 to 15 is a sensible target, and it fits in one slot because pearls stack to 16 ^[2].

Method 1: piglin bartering

Bartering means trading gold ingots to piglins, the gold-loving natives of the Nether, for a random item. Drop an ingot near an adult piglin or use one on it. It examines the gold for 6 seconds and tosses you the result; a full cycle takes 6.05 seconds in Java ^[1].

Not every piglin will trade:

• Baby piglins keep the ingot and give nothing back, and piglin brutes (the axe-carrying guards of bastions) ignore gold ^{[1, 6]}.
• Hit a piglin mid-barter and it keeps the ingot ^[1]; a piglin that is angry because it was hurt can’t barter at all ^[7].
• With the mob griefing game rule off, piglins only barter when you use the ingot on them ^[1].

The ender pearl odds in 1.21

Each ingot has a 10 in 469 chance (about 2.13%) to return 2 to 4 ender pearls ^[1]. That has been the value since 1.21.6, which added dried ghasts to the barter list ^[8]. From 1.16.2 through 1.21.5 the chance was 10 in 459, about 2.18% ^[9].

Older guides may describe 1.16 or 1.16.1, when piglins gave 4 to 8 pearls at about 4.73% per ingot, roughly 3.5 ingots per pearl ^[9]. Version 1.16.2 reworked the bartering loot ^[6], and a pearl now costs more than four times as much gold.

How much gold per pearl

The arithmetic, with current numbers:

• A pearl barter gives 2, 3 or 4 pearls, so 3 on average.
• Pearls per ingot: 3 × 10/469 ≈ 0.064.
• Ingots per pearl: 469 ÷ 30 ≈ 15.6, which matches the wiki’s figure of 15.63 ^[1].
• For 12 pearls: 12 × 15.63 ≈ 188 gold ingots, or about 21 blocks of gold at nine ingots per block ^[10].

In 1.21 to 1.21.5 the cost is 15.3 ingots per pearl, so about 184 ingots for twelve ^[9].

That average is a coin flip. By our own calculation from the same odds, 188 ingots reach twelve pearls about half the time; about 260 give you roughly 75%, and about 340 (38 blocks) about 90%.

At 6.05 seconds per ingot, 188 ingots take one piglin about 19 minutes; spread the gold over several piglins to finish sooner.

Staying safe around piglins

• Wear at least one piece of golden armour and adult piglins stay neutral ^[7]. Golden boots are the cheapest piece at four ingots ^[11].
• Piglins still turn on you if you attack one, open or break a chest, barrel or shulker box, or break gold blocks, gold ore or gilded blackstone near them ^[7].
• Piglin brutes attack on sight whatever you wear and can’t be distracted with gold ^[6].

Most of your gold will come from a bastion remnant, a large ruined castle found in every Nether biome except basalt deltas ^[12]. A treasure bastion’s central loot area alone holds 12 to 19 blocks of gold (108 to 171 ingots), guarded by at least one brute ^[12].

Don’t wait around: speedrunners hand over their gold, then mine more or fight blazes, and collect later ^[5].

Method 2: endermen in a warped forest

Why the warped forest

The warped forest is the blue-green Nether biome with huge warped fungi ^[13]. Outside any fortress or bastion, endermen are the only monster that spawns there, and the only other natural spawn is the strider, a passive mob that walks on lava ^{[13, 14]}. In Java, endermen are every monster spawn in the forest, against 1 in 71 in soul sand valleys and 1 in 168 in nether wastes ^[15].

The biome is uncommon ^[13]. Look for blue ground, often along the edges of crimson forests. Keep away from its border, where mobs from neighbouring biomes wander in, and wear a golden armour piece for stray piglins ^[16].

For getting around the Nether without falling into lava, see our guide to the Nether’s lava edges.

Pearl drops and Looting

An enderman drops one pearl half the time, so 0.5 pearls per kill on average. Looting, the sword enchantment that increases mob drops, raises the maximum by one per level: Looting I averages 1 pearl per kill, Looting II 1.5 and Looting III 2 ^[2]. For twelve pearls, that’s about 24 kills without Looting and 6 with Looting III. In Bedrock, Looting III averages only 1.25 ^[2].

Fighting endermen

Endermen have 40 health points (20 hearts) and hit for 7 on Normal difficulty and 10.5 on Hard ^[15]. A few rules keep fights short:

• Watch where you look. A quarter-second look at an enderman’s head from up to 64 blocks away provokes it, and from further away so can a look at its upper legs. A carved pumpkin on your head prevents this ^[15]. Keep your crosshair low until you’re ready for one.
• Fight from a two-block-high shelter. Endermen are 2.9 blocks tall ^[15] and can’t enter a space less than three blocks high, so you can fight them from a nook with a two-block ceiling ^[5].
• Trap one in a boat. An enderman in a boat or minecart can’t teleport ^[15]. Place a boat next to one and let it walk in ^[5], then finish it with your sword.
• Leave the bow at home. Endermen teleport away from most projectiles before they hit ^[15].
• No water in the Nether. Water hurts endermen ^[15], but water poured from a bucket in the Nether disappears instantly ^[17], so that trick only works in the Overworld and the End.

Hunting in the Overworld at night

Endermen spawn in every Overworld biome except mushroom fields and the deep dark, but in most biomes they’re only about 2% of monster spawns ^[15]. Hostile mobs spawn on the surface at night ^[18], while in daylight under open sky endermen teleport away at random ^[15]. So hunt at night.

Water works here: if one comes for you, empty a water bucket where you stand and it should walk in and teleport away ^[19].

An early-game ender pearl farm

Proper enderman farms work best in the End or a warped forest, where endermen spawn far more often ^[20]. Before you reach the End, a good starter design is a kill spot: a 2×2 or 3×3 cobblestone platform on a two-block pillar. Anger an enderman by looking at it, step under the platform and hit it as it arrives ^[20].

Other ways to get ender pearls

• Cleric villagers. Clerics (villagers who work at a brewing stand) can sell one pearl for 5 emeralds at Expert level, up to 12 times before restocking. In Java, an Expert cleric has a 67% chance of offering this trade ^[21]. Good for a settled base, slow early on.
• Stronghold altar chests. The single chests on altars in stronghold corridors hold one pearl roughly 23% of the time ^[22]. Useful if you arrive an eye or two short.
• Trial chambers. Each corridor barrel in these 1.21 structures has a 19.6% chance of holding 1 or 2 pearls ^[23].
• Woodland mansions. A rare secret room built to look like an End portal has a trapped chest with two pearls, rigged with TNT ^[24].

What speedrunners do

The wiki’s speedrun tutorial calls pearls “often the most time-consuming part of any speedrun” ^[5]. The current routine: find a bastion, barter there for pearls and other supplies, then head to a Nether fortress for blaze rods ^[5]. A warped forest is a top-up while piglins work through the gold; that hunt takes anywhere from under three to over five or six minutes ^[5].

Methods compared

Case study: Nixi’s run 2

Nixi is an AI VTuber whose bot plays Minecraft by itself (here’s how an AI plays Minecraft on its own). These facts come from her own run, not an outside source:

• Run 2 has all 6 blaze rods.
• As of 4 October 2026 she is on the “ender pearls” mission, with 0 of 12 pearls so far.
• Her plan is to walk to a warped forest by a route she has mapped.

Six rods make twelve blaze powder ^[4], one for each of the twelve eyes. If you’re at the same stage, note that twelve eyes fill an empty portal but leave nothing spare for one that shatters. You can follow her progress on the run status page.

FAQ

How many ender pearls do you need to beat Minecraft?

Twelve, for an End portal with no eyes in it yet; each frame has a 10% chance to come with one ^[3]. Bring two or three spares for eyes that shatter.

What are the odds of getting ender pearls from piglin bartering?

In Java 1.21.6 and later, 10 in 469 per gold ingot (about 2.13%) for 2 to 4 pearls; in 1.21 to 1.21.5, 10 in 459 ^{[1, 9]}. That’s roughly 15 to 16 ingots per pearl.

Why won’t a piglin trade with me?

It may be a baby or a brute, or you may have hit it ^[1]. Wear a piece of golden armour so it stays calm ^[7]. If the mob griefing game rule is off, use the ingot on the piglin instead of dropping it ^[1].

Where do endermen spawn?

In all three dimensions: most Overworld biomes in the dark, the Nether’s warped forests, soul sand valleys and nether wastes, and everywhere in the End ^[15]. Before you reach the End, the best place to find endermen is a warped forest.